{"id":123283,"date":"2025-02-11T13:09:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T18:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=123283"},"modified":"2025-02-11T13:09:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T18:09:03","slug":"jj-redick-luka-doncic-lakers-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/11\/jj-redick-luka-doncic-lakers-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"JJ Redick Hails Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s Lakers Debut ‘Agenda Free’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA trade deadline is several days behind us, but that hasn’t halted the hype circulating Los Angeles, where\u00a0<\/span>Luka\u00a0Don\u010di\u0107<\/span><\/a>\u00a0finally made his Lakers debut on Monday night against the Utah Jazz. The trade for Don\u010di\u0107 in exchange for Anthony Davis is still the most talked about NBA topic on morning sports shows, and rightly so. Especially considering the turmoil surrounding Dallas\u00a0<\/span>Mavericks GM Nico Harrison<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and the growing backlash pointed at him. Davis\u00a0<\/a><\/span>went down in his debut<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and is out for a significant period of time, so there is also that. In LA, though, things started on a positive note.<\/span><\/p>\n

JJ Redick Hails Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s Lakers Debut ‘Agenda Free’<\/h2>\n

Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s LA Lakers Debut Included Nerves and “Laker Basketball”<\/h3>\n

As Lakers head coach\u00a0<\/span>JJ Redick<\/span><\/a>\u00a0put it, Luka played good basketball, Lakers basketball, and the first-year bench boss couldn’t have been more impressed. Of course, Redick did offer a subtle quip regarding Don\u010di\u0107’s lowly three-point shooting, but that’s neither here nor there. All in all, Don\u010di\u0107’s debut went smoothly, and on top of it,\u00a0<\/span>LeBron James<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Austin Reaves<\/span><\/a>\u00a0appeared no different than before Luka arrived. Questions surrounding how Luka and LeBron would fit have surfaced, as has where Reaves will fit into the scenario. Thankfully, there were no signs of trouble after one game, and yes, it’s only one game. As for Luka,\u00a0<\/span>Redick praised his new superstar<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and shared his impressions on the Lakers 32nd win of the season. [7:37 mark]<\/span><\/p>\n

“I think he handled it well,” Redick said. “Knowing Luka, whether he will admit this or not, like there was probably a little bit of nerves. Playing for the Lakers for the first time and the anticipation that our fans have, this building had, his teammates had, our coaching staff had. He kind of gets that. He sees that. <\/em><\/p>\n

“I thought he’s handled it really well and he played really well tonight,” Redick added. “He could not make a three outside of the first one but again it goes back to all our guys, they just played agenda-free basketball…he didn’t make it about Luka. He made it about playing good basketball and playing Laker basketball.”<\/em><\/p>\n

A Rusty Return, but Worth the Wait<\/h3>\n

Ironically, Luka’s debut came against the Jazz, the team that Lakers GM Rob Pelinka made dealings with at the deadline. Pelinka opted out of telling Danny Ainge that the Mavericks and Don\u010di\u0107 were also involved. As for the game itself, Luka didn’t go off by any means, nor was he expected to after missing over a month of basketball. In 24 minutes, Don\u010di\u0107 went for 14 points, five rebounds, and four assists. He and LeBron had a couple of solid connections, as did Luka and\u00a0<\/span>Jaxson Hayes<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for lobs. However, the\u00a0<\/span>Lakers still need to address their center problem<\/span><\/a>, which has also taken another turn following the aftermath of the Mark Williams<\/a> fallout.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luka did look slow, and some rustiness was evident. However, after a few games under him, there shouldn’t be any doubt that the future league MVP will return to full form\u2014much like what we saw from him in the playoffs last year. What matters is that Luka’s Lakers debut avoided injury\u2014the same cannot be said for the AD and the Mavericks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NBA trade deadline is several days behind us, but that hasn’t halted the hype circulating Los Angeles, where\u00a0Luka\u00a0Don\u010di\u0107\u00a0finally made his Lakers debut on Monday night against the Utah Jazz. The trade for Don\u010di\u0107 in exchange for Anthony Davis is still the most talked about NBA topic on morning sports shows, and rightly so. Especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":123285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1608,62],"tags":[240,4556,1962,2279,38,1133,4044],"class_list":["post-123283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lakers","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-anthony-davis","tag-austin-reaves","tag-jaxson-hayes","tag-jj-redick","tag-lebron-james","tag-luka-doncic","tag-mark-williams"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123295,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123283\/revisions\/123295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}